Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories

In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories

In the collection's title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In "Haunting Olivia", two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In "Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers", a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer camp for troubled sleepers (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Sleep Apneics; Cabin 3, Somnambulists . . . ).

In the Darkroom

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of Backlash comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father, and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. When the feminist writer learned her 76-year-old father - long estranged and living in Hungary - had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known?

Boy, Snow, Bird

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.

The Lifeboat: A Novel

Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life. In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying her and her husband, Henry, across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die. As the castaways battle the elements, and each other, Grace recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met and the new life of privilege she thought she'd found.

NW: A Novel

Somewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up there, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes - whatever that means....

BowedBookshelf says:"I believe this book is best listened to than read"

The Orchardist

At the turn of the 20th century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion.

Land of Love and Drowning

In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule. Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them. Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic.

Her: A Memoir

Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, gifted and beautiful twin sisters Christa and Cara Parravani were able to create a private haven of splendor and amusement that they shared between themselves. They earned their way into a prestigious college, established careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively), and entered young marriages. But plagued by their father's early rejection of them and further damaged by being raped as a young woman, Cara veered into depression, drugs, and a shocking early death.

Ten Thousand Saints

Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New York City's East Village, Jude stumbles upon straight edge, an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical aggression of hardcore punk and a righteous intolerance for drugs, meat, and sex.

Tenth of December: Stories

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet. In the taut opener, "Victory Lap", a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home", a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned.

The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)

The Newest Oprah Book Club 2016 Selection. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

The Lowland

Born just 15 months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s, and Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother’s political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America.

Americanah

As teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love in a Nigeria under military dictatorship. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America, where Obinze hopes to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?

The Blazing World: A Novel

With The Blazing World, internationally best­selling author Siri Hustvedt returns to the New York art world in her most masterful and urgent novel since What I Loved. Hustvedt, who has long been celebrated for her “beguiling, lyrical prose” (The Sunday Times Books, London), tells the provocative story of the artist Harriet Burden. After years of watching her work ignored or dismissed by critics, Burden conducts an experiment she calls Maskings: She presents her own art behind three male masks, concealing her female identity.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

How Should a Person Be?

Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a 20-something playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close - sometimes too close - observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.

Purity: A Novel

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

The First Bad Man: A Novel

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense nonprofit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

The Sympathizer: A Novel

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

Fates and Furies: A Novel

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of 24 years.

The Savage Detectives: A Novel

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation. The Savage Detectives is a hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It is the first of Bolaño's two giant works, with 2666, to be translated into English and is already being hailed as a masterpiece.

Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.… So begins the story in this exquisite debut novel about a Chinese American family living in a small town in 1970s Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos.

Get in Trouble: Stories

She has been hailed by Michael Chabon as "the most darkly playful voice in American fiction" and by Neil Gaiman as "a national treasure." Now Kelly Link's eagerly awaited new collection - her first for adult listeners in a decade - proves indelibly that this bewitchingly original writer is among the finest we have.

Audible Editor Reviews

The Bigtree clan is a family in crisis. The mother, Hiola, has passed away and she was not only the main gator wrestler and star attraction at the Swamplandia theme park, but the glue that held the family together. Now on the verge of losing their beloved home, the Bigtrees find they are ill-prepared to deal with the real world into which they've been thrust. Each member of the family leaves their sheltered enclave convinced they can somehow turn things around. Yet do they leave Swamplandia more to save it or to escape it?

The narration duties here are divided in some very interesting ways. Actress/writer Arielle Sitrick plays the main character of young Ava in the chapters focusing mainly on Swamplandia. David Ackroyd takes on the role of Kiwi, the older teenage son, with his chapters being told mainly from a rival theme park, a place that's a bizarro alternative universe version of his previous home. The two narrators see things quite differently. Sitrick voices Ava as the winsome innocent and the mystic heart of a Swamplandia where anything is possible; however, did the nostalgic world she remembers ever really exist? Ackroyd plays Kiwi as the somewhat naive yet most practical member of the family. He has big plans and learns quickly, but finds things are not quite so easy out in the real world.

Karen Russell's Swamplandia is an amusing and well crafted piece that's a bit Florida gothic and a bit magical realism. Will Ava's rare red gator save the day? Maybe Kiwi with his big plans and Forrest Gump-like luck will come through after all? Will younger sister Osceola ever marry her long-dead ghost boyfriend? Then again, perhaps the various family pipe dreams are destined to fail, as perhaps is Swamplandia? In the end the characters and the listener have to question just what a happy ending for this quirky family would even look like. That's the journey that Russell takes you on with Swamplandia, and it's a colorful, original trip well worth taking. Cleo Creech

Publisher's Summary

From the celebrated 29-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (“How I wish these were my own words, instead of the breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s.... Run for your life. This girl is on fire," said the Los Angeles Times Book Review) comes a blazingly original debut novel that takes us back to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine.

The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly number-one in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage 98 gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.

What the Critics Say

“Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride. . . . This family, wrestling with their desires and demons . . . will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!” (The New York Times Book Review)

I am wrestling with myself (not alligators) about how I feel after listening to this book. This book is listed in Stephen King's top ten books you MUST read so I took his advice. I had also read a rave review from Carl Hiaasen, my expectations were quite high. And yes, I do love the premise of this story.
Ms. Russell does a beautiful job of inviting us into the swamp, we feel the heat, see the waterways, smell the wild orchids. She makes the run down theme park Swamplandia! come alive and that entertains. Throughout Ms. Russell produces beautiful prose that makes this book special.
However, I just can't join in the praise for the Bigtree tribe. Mother Hilola (think Esther Williams swimming with gators) is the star performer , Father the Chief runs the show, son Kiwi and daughters Osceola and Ava (the main character, an alligator wrestler in training) are home schooled kids who's stories drive the plot.
In the first few chapters tragedy strikes, the old theme park looses it's star performer Hilola. The children each react in their own way, and from that point on nothing goes right in the world at Swamplandia!
Although there are so many things I loved about this book, I think the narrator Arielle Sitrick does this book a terrible disservice. Her tween voice would be fine if she had read this book with even a little passion and feeling. Her narration was flat and failed miserably. Even in the most interesting parts, this narrator made me too often not care what happened next. I can usually overlook a sub-par narrator, but this time, I was so confused, I kept trying to figure out if it was truly the narrator, the prose or me. I think narrator
There were moments I couldn't put the book down, and moments I wanted to just walk away from this book.
I also felt that Kiwi' s part of the story was weak, perhaps if this part had been stronger and more engaging maybe the bad narration (female reader) could have been mitigated.
Maybe reading this book in text is a better bet.

I'm halfway through the book and it is ok. Not great, not terrible - ok. However, the reader's constant mispronunciation of simple words is very distracting. Gherkin = jerkin to our reader and bromeliad = bro-mi-lad. And possibly the worst of this list, the book is set in Florida so I would hope the reader would at least be able to get the pronunciation of Florida cities correct. Nope. Ocala = Oh-cah-la. Ugh. This is very disappointing and very distracting.

Her pace and tone are fine. She is young, but this is a 13 year old girl's story so I'm ok with that.

I would assume these audiobooks are edited prior to publication. Shame on the editor. Sounds like someone took a nap when they should have been listening.

I am a long-term Audible customer and have read many audible books I didn't like or even finish. Fair enough; caveat emptor. Most audible books are great and have given me hours of pleasure. However, the narration of Swamplandia is so dreadful, so amateurish, I couldn't get past the first hour. Does audible exercise any quality control regarding its selection of the audio versions it sells? How bad does a book have to be before Audible editors take it off the shelf? Did the publisher of Swamplandia set a bored 13-year-old at a table and force her to read this book, a book she obviously hated? (Sorry, Arielle, but your producer/director did you a disservice by not giving you the support you needed. Most bad narrations are really producer/director generated.) And...please...Audible...ask the publisher to try again. The book itself looks great.

While I enjoyed the richness of this book's imagery and the fluidity and grace of the writing,I could not connect with the characters nor the setting.

There is the abundant quality of fantasy in this writing, and the story reminds me of the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson books. It has the feeling of a magical odyssey, with fantastical creatures and
phantasmagoric gauntlets which the young hero must overcome. And the writing is more about creating a scene, with vivid, nuanced description than about character development. The book actually does read like a theme park ride or video game, so if fantasy is your thing, then this book is for you.

I am not surprised that Stephen King likes this book. Carl Hiassen's endorsement does not surprise me either, given the book's environmental message clothed in a story about a failed Florida swampland theme park.

I agree with the opinions about the female narrator. Mispronounced words - eg. bromeliad sounded like "bromelade" as in "marmalade" - are forgivable, but for me, her flat delivery prevented any identification with this person.

I actually did prefer the parts of the narrative that dealt with the "Kiwi" character. The male narrator had the perfect voice and just the right tone, and I looked forward to the sections that returned to his story.

I am not sure I'll enjoy the south Florida islands and wetlands with quite the same gusto as I had prior to reading this book.

The female (read: 13 year old girl) reader here is terrible. Nothing against the girl, but she's not a professional, and It's an awful fit for the text. I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks, and only had problems with two readers, this being one of them. Unlistenable.

The you woman who narrates this book is just a terrible reader. I feel like I'm listening to a high school student who has no idea how to read out loud. The narration is so amateurish that I can't say if the novel has any merit or not. Very disappointed.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Train dreams

Would you be willing to try another one of Arielle Sitrick and David Ackroyd ’s performances?

Absolutely not

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Anger, disappointment.

Any additional comments?

Please make sure professionals are narrating these books. It's a waste of money to buy a book that is so poorly performed.

I should have heeded all the "terrible reader" reviews. The female narrator has an annoying habit of putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle, making the text momentarily incomprehensible. It's hard enough to stay interested in the story without the distraction of having to translate the reader's mispronunciations. The male reader is better, but I almost gave up on the book before he appeared in chapter 6. The characters are even less interesting than the story. And who would name a family amusement park the World of Darkness? Talk about your heavy-handed symbolism. From the amusement park name to the female narrator, Swamplandia is amateur hour for far too many of its 13 hours.

Originating from a 2006 short story found in St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Swaplandia! is Karen Russell’s debut novel and will probably be remembered for its sheer oddity and Russell’s poetic and unconventional use of language. You have quotes like, "Something lunged in me then. receded. A giggle or a sob. A noise. I thought you look very stupid dad" and "Like any hatchling gator, her snout tapered into a look of flutey suspicion". Such lush descriptions and grammatical acrobatics due demand attention (as does the exclamation point in the title), but they do little to help our plucky narrator Ava who has been abandoned by her entire family at their alligator wrestling park in the Florida swamplands. At its best pace Swamplandia! ebbs along. A secondary sub plot involving Ava’s brother Kiwi who runs away to work at a rival amusement park, goes nowhere. When the action begins, somewhere in the middle of the story—Ava sets out to save her older sister who has run away to marry her ghost lover--it’s a welcome relief which then gives way to terror as we realize the dangerous situation Ava has naively put herself in.

In case you’re unaware, Swamplandia! received a starred review from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s weekly, an A- from EW, a rave in ELLE, a plug from Stephen King amongst other glowing accounts. These accolades frankly left me stumped. I had to start the story over almost a dozen times because I kept losing interest. Yes, it is imaginative and uniquely voiced, but instead of coloring Ava’s story, these devices bog it down.

The audio book is read by a young narrator, Arielle Sitrick, and since Ava is a pre-teen, this makes sense. But the alternating chapters are voiced by David Ackroyd who is clearly a middle age man, not the tonnage Kiwi one expects. So it makes the gimmick of using Arielle pointless. Disappointed.

I had high hopes for this book as I am very familiar and fascinated with Southwest Florida and its mystic islands. I tried hard to like it, but the book goes nowhere. The female reader is also very hard to listen to and should not read books for a living.

There could be no better example of how the wrong narrator can ruin a book than this. While I imagine I would have had problems with Swamplandia in any case, Ms. Sitrick reads in a flat monotone, which is hardly what the book requires. She mispronounces words, she puts emphasis on the wrong syllables, she's generally a disaster, and it's extremely difficult to listen to her. Not so her co-narrator, David Ackroyd, who unfortunately reads only a small portion of the book. This was, alas, an infuriating experience.